[ Hacksterpiece Theatre is a regular column devoted to fun, odd, and interesting retro game hacks. ]

Greetings! Thanks for joining me once again for Hacksterpiece Theatre. This week, in the concluding segment of the “Lost Hacks of DahrkDaiz” series, I’ll be examining another incomplete and “lost” DahrkDaiz NES game hack as usual — but this time it’s a more recent one starring a certain iconic Italian plumber’s green-garbed, typically overlooked brother.

Luigi in the Spotlight

Shortly after completing his 2004 magnum opus, Mario Adventure, DahrkDaiz got straight to work on a totally new hack of Super Mario Bros. 3 which would feature Luigi in the starring role, eschewing the usual Mario vehicle cliché. Luigi’s Coin Quest, as it would be titled, would have numerous similarities with his previous SMB3 hack, but would greatly improve upon them. Over the next eight months, only one world of this epic project would be finished. And yet, despite being incomplete, the resulting work is one of the most sophisticated and highly playable examples of sheer technical mastery in the field of NES game hacking that the gaming world has never seen.

[ Continue reading Hacksterpiece Theatre: The Lost Hacks of DahrkDaiz, Part 3 (Luigi’s Coin Quest) » ]

“Ok, RedWolf. Now you’ve gone and done it. Selling out to the Man!” That’s me. I’ve got a lot of clutter to clear and a lot of hungry kitten mouths to feed / fix, so I’m going to be auctioning a series of vintage computing and gaming related items in the coming weeks. The first item on the block is my very own custom NES DVD Player, which I lovingly crafted by hand and featured in an article on this very site back in early March. The article was very popular and I received a number of offers to purchase the unique player. I figured I’d never sell it, so I turned them down. How silly I was — here it is, for sale. I’m not planning on making any more of these, so this is your only chance to get the real thing. Tell all your friends and help me spread the word. It’s for a good cause, after all…feline population control. Thanks!

Here’s a site worth noting for all you historians out there. For the last ten years, Kevin Savetz has been hard at work transcribing the text of hundreds of vintage computer and video game magazines. Better yet, he’s received full permission from the original magazine publishers to provide the articles for free online. And they’re all available in the Classic Computer Magazine Archive. Kevin’s focus was originally on magazines about Atari consoles and computers, but it’s no surprise since the whole operation started out as the “Digital Antic Project,” whose aim was to put the entire text of the Atari-centric magazine “Antic” online. In September 2000 he met that goal and soon turned his attention to other magazines like the Atari ST-focused “STart” and multiplatform magazines like “Compute!” and “Creative Computing.” Now the site contains articles from nine different publications, either in whole or in part, available for online view.

Kevin loves sending me news of his latest additions (and I’m not complaining), which I’ve meant to tell you about before. Just this morning he wrote:

AtariMagazines.com has added the full text of 21 more issues of Compute! magazine: Fall 1979 (the first issue!), January 1981, February 1981, March 1981, April 1981, October 1981, December 1981, February 1982, June 1982, July 1982, October 1982, November 1982, January 1983, March 1983, June 1983, August 1983, September 1983, October 1983, September 1989, November 1990, and December 1990.

Published from 1979 through 1994, Compute! was a multiplatform computer magazine covering Atari, Apple, Commodore, Texas Instruments, Timex/Sinclair, and other early personal computers.

If you’re the kind of collector / historian who likes to delve deep into the news, thoughts, and reviews of the period, I definitely recommend checking the Archive out. I’d also like to thank Kevin Savetz for providing a valuable service and resource for the vintage computing and gaming enthusiast.

Sometimes it’s scary what you can find while randomly browsing the Internet. Case in point, a man’s page dedicated to his pet cat named Atari, complete with logo. On the site itself you can peruse various pictures of Atari in different states of play or laziness, as well as actual videos of the “new” Atari in action. (Note: My link above is to a Coral mirror of the site so its poor server doesn’t tank in case somebody spreads this around.)

And just so you can get a taste of it without having to leave home (that’s about all it’s worth anyway), I present to you a screen cap of the main page:

But it gets even better than this. Turns out that Atari has a bug-eyed sister named Sega. The resemblance to Sega’s mascot is startling…

If news of a “Nintendo the cat” comes my way, you’ll be the first to know. I promise.